Do you have the empirical data to back up your unqualified assertions?
I gave some: Google never returns more than 1000 hits. Therefore estimates orders of magnitude above 1000 (as in the case at hand) cannot be tested by looking at the actual number of hits returned: the two numbers have nothing to do with each other.
I do not know how accurate the estimates are, but a factor of several seems to be about right, as in the test you just made. I have also seen anomalies such as a search for X giving an estimate lower than for a search of X and Y, but never by orders of magnitude, that I’ve noticed.
I gave some: Google never returns more than 1000 hits. Therefore estimates orders of magnitude above 1000 (as in the case at hand) cannot be tested by looking at the actual number of hits returned: the two numbers have nothing to do with each other.
I do not know how accurate the estimates are, but a factor of several seems to be about right, as in the test you just made. I have also seen anomalies such as a search for X giving an estimate lower than for a search of X and Y, but never by orders of magnitude, that I’ve noticed.